Arnold Promise Witch Hazel – 7 Gallon Pot (4-5′)

Discovered at Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, the story of ‘Arnold Promise’ Witch Hazel begins in 1928, when Arboretum propagator William Judd collected and grew seed harvested from an Arboretum accession of Chinese witch hazel (H. mollis), a plant acquired from plant explorer Ernest Henry Wilson’s 1907-09 expedition for the Arboretum to China and Tibet. Nearly two decades later, famed Arboretum taxonomist Alfred Rehder deduced that plants propagated from its seed were likely hybrids, as they exhibited intermediate characteristics of the Chinese witch hazel and its neighbor in the Arboretum landscape, the Japanese witch hazel (H. japonica). With this in mind, he selected an appropriate scientific name for the new plants: H. × intermedia. By the late 1950s, staff observed that one of the hybrid offspring consistently bloomed with larger flowers and over a longer period than the others. This individual was given the cultivar name ‘Arnold Promise’.